WILKES-BARRE - Within a mile of the courthouse, just down the street from the Luzerne County Correctional Facility, a piece of the region's anthracite mining history languishes in a state of dilapidation, covered in graffiti, strewn with trash.

Soon it will cease to exist.

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and the state Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation are teaming up to demolish and remove the Dorrance Colliery fan complex off Courtright Avenue in Wilkes-Barre, near the Susquehanna River.

However, crucial parts of the complex will be saved: A 1883 Guibal fan, 1883 Pittston steam engine, 1908 Dickson-Guibal fan and matching Corliss steam engine will be preserved, as well as other historic artifacts at the site. Their new home will be the No. 9 Coal Mine and Museum complex in Lansford, Carbon County.

The fans, housed in a three-building complex, supplied miners with fresh air and helped keep dangerous gases from building up.

Ever since the Dorrance Breaker was demolished in 1983, there has been talk of getting rid of the fan house complex as well. In fact, the complex was slated to be demolished in 1984, but plans were stalled for 30 years as local, state and federal entities contemplated ways to preserve it.

"This has always been on the radar. We're just trying to prioritize projects in terms of importance," DEP northeast region spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said.

"We've been trying for a few years to do something with this land. We knew we wanted to reclaim it, but we were actually looking for the go-ahead â¦ to get this demolished."

Because the site is in an advanced state of disrepair and subject to trespassers, it was designated a priority-one hazard, according to a ranking system established by the Federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.

"We want to move it to the museum to preserve it," Connolly said of the mining equipment, "but this land is abandoned mine land, and it's a health and safety hazard."

Since the Dorrance Colliery site is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, public comment on the project is being sought through Friday by the Office of Surface Mining in Harrisburg.

The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 allows use of federal funding to move the equipment and demolish the structures, but the project can't be bid out until after the public comment process, Connolly said. She said it's too soon to determine the cost of the project.

When it comes time for demolition, the buildings at the complex will be dismantled using machinery - "Typically we don't use implosion," she said.

Connolly said the site will then be filled in, graded, leveled out and planted with grass.

Bill Best, president of the Huber Breaker Preservation Society and a mining historian, has photos of the Dorrance fan complex taken after it was closed but before it was trashed by transients and vandals.

The 1938-vintage Huber Breaker of the former Blue Coal Co. in Ashley is also slated for demolition, likely in spring, by its new owners, Philadelphia-based Paselo Logistics LLC.

"All I can say is it's a very unfortunate end to the Huber," Best said, adding that the loss of the Dorrance complex is "equally distressing."

History of the Dorrance

"My God, there's a historic fan in there," local mining expert Bill Hastie exclaimed when he heard about the pending demolition of the Dorrance fan complex.

He was relieved to hear the fans and engines, including the one made in his native West Pittston, would be preserved.

Hastie, 94, is a retired coal miner who boasts "at least 100 mining people in my family tree" and who has studied the region's anthracite history extensively.

In fact, Hastie was part of it: he was employed at the Knox mine at the time of the Jan. 22, 1959 disaster. He was off shift that morning, but he helped with the rescue of several of his colleagues who were working in the mine when the Susquehanna River invaded it.

The Lehigh Valley Coal Co. purchased the approximately 550-acre former Bidlack farm from Sarah Hunt in 1880 for mining purposes.

The Dorrance Colliery, named for prominent Kingston resident Col. Charles Dorrance, started operation in 1884. Miners worked several coal seams including the Baltimore and Hillman, which yielded tons of top-quality anthracite.

A drawback was that noxious gases, particularly coal-bed methane, build up in mines, and the Dorrance Colliery was especially gassy.

The Mine Ventilation Law of 1870, passed the year after 110 men and boys died in a massive explosion at the Avondale coal mine in Plymouth Township, required bringing air into mines to dilute and disperse potentially explosive gases.

An 1884 report by the state Inspector of Mines noted that at the new Dorrance colliery, "The mine is ventilated by a thirty-five-foor fan, Guibal pattern, which was started April 24, and is ever since producing ventilation far in excess of their present need, although running but very slowly."

Centrifugal Guibal fans, designed by a Belgian inventor in the 1870s, were most commonly used in the anthracite fields, including at the Dorrance Colliery. The older fan is the largest type, measuring 35 feet in diameter and having 10 blades supported by a frame.

The 1883-vintage steam engine that powered the fan was manufactured by Pittston Engine and Machine Co.

Hastie said the company started out as the Wisner & Strong Foundry, and was actually located in West Pittston.

In the 1870s, R.J. Wisner and Theodore Strong worked in steam engines and valves, particularly for mining and industrial use. They sold the foundry to the Pittston Engine and Machine Co., which was chartered in July 1882, with George H. Parrish as the president and W.B. Culver as general manager.

Parrish and Culver would in turn sell out to Wilkes-Barre-based Vulcan Iron Works in 1887, which consolidated the West Pittston foundry along with another acquisition, Wyoming Valley Manufacturing Co.

The importance of ventilation was underscored by a deadly explosion in the Baltimore seam workings at the Dorrance Colliery the afternoon of Oct. 7, 1895. A buildup of gas exploded, killing five engineers, a fire boss and a miner.

A report by the state inspector of coal mines indicated the fan had been shut down for repairs for about four hours on the previous day, which allowed the gas to accumulate at the point where the explosion occurred.

In the aftermath, Lehigh Valley Coal Co. management declared that no mine bosses should use naked lights under any circumstances. The engineering corps members and miners used open flame lamps until the turn of the 20th century.

Miners at the Dorrance Colliery initially rebelled on the grounds that the enclosed safety lamps were too dim and not as convenient to use. When management insisted, the miners went on a brief strike to express their displeasure.

"The miners who are striking against the introduction of safety lamps in the Dorrance Colliery are really contending for a chance to commit suicide," the Philadelphia Ledger opined in July, 1899.

A serious explosion - in which, fortunately, no one was injured - caused by a naked lamp igniting gas, which in turn touched off a powder keg, in February 1903 probably changed the miners' minds.

The year 1908 saw changes to the Dorrance Colliery, including the addition of a new 28-foot Dickson-Guibal fan driven by an Allis-Chalmers four-valve Corliss engine and relocation of the original Guibal fan and Pittston engine to its current site in the complex.

The third significant fan at the complex was a circa-1930 Duplex Conoidal fan powered by a Corliss steam engine.

Best says he knows of only one other surviving Guibal fan in the region, one at the Gravity Slope colliery in Archbald.

"That's great news," he said of the fact that the one at the Dorrance complex will be preserved.

One last explosion

The Dorrance Colliery survived the Depression and World Wars I and II. It shut down briefly in the mid-1950s but reopened - only to close for good in 1959, after the Knox Mine disaster.

The colliery buildings sat quietly decaying for the next two decades. Neglect, exposure to the elements, arson fires and vandals took their toll.

Dorr Corp. paid taxes on the land but not the buildings until 1977. As a result, Luzerne County took over the buildings in lieu of unpaid taxes.

In 1983, a deal was negotiated for seven acres of the colliery property for construction of a nursing home. The Dorrance Breaker was demolished on June 7, 1983 to make way for it.

But the relic didn't go quietly.

The explosion created sound waves that shattered more than 80 windows, caused structural damage to numerous homes and buildings in the vicinity - including the county's voting machine warehouse - and sent debris raining down throughout the North End, according to The Citizens' Voice archives. The destructive blast prompted an investigation by various authorities, including DEP, and the demolition contractor's license was temporarily revoked.

When the other colliery buildings were torn down during the summer of 1983, the fan complex was chronicled in photographs and writing as part of the National Park Service/U.S. Department of the Interior Historic American Engineering Record program.

However, the complex was not demolished, and in December 1993, representatives of organizations including the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commisison, state Department of Community Affairs and the Luzerne County Historical Society toured the site to assess its condition and discuss possible preservation scenarios.

The three fans and engines, each in their own buildings, "represented the technological development of mine ventilation," the Historic American Engineering Record report states. "The complex was identified as the most complete mine ventilation system in the anthracite region."

Ray Clarke, a founding member of the Huber Breaker Preservation Society, hauled anthracite from the Dorrance Colliery for his uncle Joe Laufer, a coal dealer. It saddens him to see the last vestiges of the coal mining industry about to fall to the wrecking ball.

Clarke bemoaned the loss of historic landmarks in the Wyoming Valley, including the Fell House, the Hotel Sterling, and soon the Huber Breaker and the Dorrance Colliery fan complex.

Clarke's fear is that "There will be no history for future generations."

eskrapits@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2072Comments on the proposed plans for the Dorrance Colliery fan complex can be sent to: David Hamilton, Program Specialist, Office of Surface Mining, 415 Market St., Suite 304, Harrisburg, PA 17101; or by email to: dhamilton@osmre.gov. Friday is the deadline to submit feedback.

Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:34 pmPosts: 6906Location: Within 60 Miles of the Northern Anthracite Field

"Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and the state Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation"

say that 10 times fast! yea i knew this was comming. havent been there in awhile, but last time i was there, the was more of a danger of being stuck by one of the hundreds of used dope needles strewn all over the property than falling off the building! nice to see the fans being saved, too bad the big one didnt go to the huber park. would be nice to keep the northern field history up here, that would have been a better place than no.9 but taking it to no.9 is better than nothing! that was a pretty nice write up by the newspaper Scott. pretty soon there really will be nothing left to our mining history in this area. we missed so much only getting started around 99, but we saw so much before it was finally torn down. really, almost every site we have seen is now gone or slated to be. except for a few jewels that we have hidden away

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